The Design: Love

For God so loved the world
That he gave his only begotten Son
that whoever believes in him
should not perish
but have everlasting life.

Introduction and Review

These words of Jesus speak of four great realities in life. Each
begins with "D" to help us remember.

The danger we all face: perishing under the wrath of God
because of our sin (3:36).

The design of God to rescue us from this danger: his love
which sends the Son to lay down his life (10:18; 15:13), and take
away the sin of the world (1:29).

The duty of man in response: believing on the Son of God.

The destiny promised to all who believe: eternal life.

The danger. The design. The duty. And the destiny.

Last week we talked about the danger of perishing under the
wrath of God. This week we ponder the design of God to rescue us
from perishing: the design of the love of God to rescue us from the
wrath of God (3:36).

"For God so loved the world
that he gave his only begotten Son . . . "

God's Design of love

One of the steps in coming to embrace something as true is a
serious, focused consideration of what it is. That's what I want us
to do this morning under this heading of God's design of love. Pray
with me that, as I simply direct the focus of your mind to these
things, God would confirm the reality of what you hear—that
he would give you spiritual taste buds to perceive and apprehend
the true value of these things. We'll focus on four great
truths.

1. There Is a God

The verse begins "For God . . . "

Jesus teaches us that there is a God. That God exists. Jesus is
absolutely saturated with his consciousness of God. Everything he
says relates to God. Everything he does relates to God. He is a
God-entranced human being.

There are many reasons—good reasons—for believing in
God. One of the best is that Jesus taught us that God exists and
that he is the central reality in a life. If someone says, "Why do
you believe in God?" you can say, "I believe in God because Jesus
believed in God, and all that I know of Jesus makes me trust him
more than I trust any philosopher or any scientist or any
theologian or any friend I have ever known or read about." Then you
can ask them, "Do you know anyone more trustworthy or better
qualified to teach us about the existence of God than Jesus?"

We begin with God. Don't rush over this lightly. Pause in your
life, and say to yourself. There is God. The world began with God.
The world depends on God. I am a person with a conscience and a
sense of justice and the capacity to contemplate spiritual things,
and speak in sentences, and to love—all because I am created
in the image of God. He was there first. And he made me like
himself and for himself—that he might be known through me
(Isaiah 43:7). The meaning of my life is knowing and showing
God.

2. God Has a Son

"For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son .
. . "

Now this is a stunning reality. Jesus teaches us that God has
one only begotten Son. For Muslims this sounds like blasphemy. They
say it means that God must have had sex with an angel, or with a
woman.

It is a startling thing to believe with Jesus that God has a
Son—a one and only begotten Son. So focus on this for a
moment. Don't fly over it because it's so commonplace. It is
amazing and wonderful and mind-boggling—and O so crucial for
our salvation from perishing.

In calling the Son of God "only begotten" Jesus means to
distinguish the only begotten Son of God from sons who are made or
adopted as sons. The angels are called "sons of God" (Job 1:6), and
we Christians are called "sons of God" (Romans 8:14–16). Angels are
"sons of God" by virtue of being directly created by God; and
Christians are "sons of God" by virtue of being adopted into his
family through our being joined to Christ by the Holy Spirit.

But the "one and only begotten Son" is not a Son by creation or
by adoption, but by begetting. And begetting is simply a human
analogy for what is beyond our comprehension. But it carries a
crucial truth, as C.S. Lewis said: "Rabbits beget rabbits; horses
beget horses; humans beget humans, not statues or portraits; and
God begets God—not humans and not angels."

God's only begotten Son is God. And there never was a time when
God had not begotten his Son. Because the begetting of the Son is
equally eternal with the existence of the God the Father. The
standing forth of the Son as a perfect, personal image and
representation and equal of the Father so that they exist as two
persons with one divine essence is simply what it means to be God.
This is the way God has existed from all eternity, without
beginning. This is the point of John 1:1, 14,

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the
Word was God . . . And the Word became flesh and dwelt among
us.

In other words, the Word, Jesus, is the only begotten Son, and
co-eternal with the Father.

There is God. And God has a one and only begotten Son.

3. God Loves

"For God so loved . . . "

Jesus teaches us that the God who exists loves. Let that sink
in. He loves. He loves. Of all the things you might say about God,
be sure to say this. He loves. The writer of this gospel says in 1
John 4:8, "God is love." Which I take to mean at least this: giving
what's good and serving the benefit of others is closer to the
essence of God than getting and being served. God loves. God is
love.

Now Jesus tells us more specifically what he means by love in
John 3:16. "For God so loved . . . " The "so" here doesn't mean an
amount of love but a way of loving. He doesn't mean: God loved so
much, but God loved this way. "God so loved" means "God thus
loved."

How? What is the way God loved? He loved such "that he gave his
only begotten Son." And we know that this giving was a giving up to
rejection and death. "He came to his own and his own received him
not" (1:11). Instead they killed him. And Jesus said of all this,
"I glorified you [Father] on the earth, having accomplished the
work which you gave me to do" (John 17:4). So when the Father gave
his only begotten Son, he gave him to die.

That's the kind of love the Father has. It is a giving love. It
gives his most precious treasure—his Son. We need to meditate
on that this Christmas. It was a very costly love. A very powerful
love. A very rugged, painful love. The meaning of Christmas is the
celebration of this love. "For God so loved . . . "

And the fourth focus this morning is that God gives this costly
love to an undeserving world of sinners.

4. God Loves the World

"For God so loved the world . . . "

The manner of his love is not merely seen in the infinite value
of what he gives—his only begotten Son—but in the
rebelliousness of whom he gives him for.

Perchance for a good man one might dare to die. But God shows
his love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for
us. (Romans 5:7–8)

Just before John 3:16 Jesus compares his own coming with the
what happened in the day of Moses when the people rebelled against
God and said they were sick of manna. The result of this sin was a
plague of serpents all through the camp, people dying
everywhere.

When Moses prayed for the people, Numbers 21:8 says,

Then the Lord said to Moses, "Make a fiery serpent, and set it
on a standard; and it shall come about, that everyone who is
bitten, when he looks at it, he shall live."

So God's design of love to rescue the rebellious people from
perishing was to lift up a serpent on a pole so that all the people
had to do was look at it in faith and be saved.

Then Jesus says in John 3:14–15,

And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so
must the Son of Man be lifted up; that whoever believes may in Him
have eternal life.

When John 3:16 says, "God so loved the world that he gave . . . ,"
it means he gave his one and only begotten Son to a world of
rebels, serpent bitten, sinful, perishing—and him their only
hope. God loved this world.

There is a God.

He has a Son.

He loves.

And he loves the world.

"Whoever"

And the upshot of that for us this morning is powerfully in the
word "whoever." "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only
begotten Son, that whoever believes . . . " God means for his Son to
be lifted up before the world of sinners—all sinners, all
kinds of sinners, all degrees of sinners—the way the serpent
was lifted up on the pole, because he loves the world.

You say, "I have carried the poison of the serpent of sin in my
life for a long, long time." Yes, God knows that. He is God. He
knows everything about you. You are in worse shape in his eyes than
you are in your own. But that didn't stop him. In fact it is
precisely the measure of our unworthiness that makes the love of
God reach for his Son as the only adequate sacrifice.

Do not look at yourself this morning. Look to the Son. And to
the love of God. And to the promise that whoever believes will
never perish but have eternal life.

Look to Jesus

When Charles Spurgeon, the great London preacher from the last
century, was 16 years old and unconverted, he happened into a small
Methodist Chapel with 15 people in a snowstorm. The preacher was a
layman. He
took his text from Isaiah 45:22, "Look to me and be
saved all the ends of the earth." At one point he looked right at
the boy and said, "Young man, look to Jesus Christ. Look. Look.
Look"

Spurgeon said,

I saw at once the way of salvation . . . Like as when the brazen
serpent was lifted up, the people only looked and were healed, so it
was with me. I had been waiting to do fifty things, but when I
heard that word, Look! what a charming word it seemed to me! Oh! I
looked until I could almost have looked my eyes away. There and
then the cloud was gone, the darkness had rolled away, and that
moment I saw the sun.

I say the same to you this morning. Look to Jesus. Believe on
Jesus. And you will not perish.

John Piper (@JohnPiper) is founder and teacher of desiringGod.org and chancellor of Bethlehem College & Seminary. For 33 years, he served as pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is author of more than 50 books.

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